When you’re sick, when something’s hurting, what you desperately want to do is to get better and stop the pain, and at that point there’s a huge risk. The risk is this: That you throw an aspirin or two at the symptom, rather than dealing with the disease.

 

You Need More Than Aspirin

One of the things that I’ve noticed in over ten years of producing this programme is that responses to the various series and messages vary greatly. Now there’s a couple of ways of explaining that: Perhaps Berni’s having a bad day or a bad week, and somehow the messages didn’t really connect. Yeah, that’s a definite possibility, in over two-and-a-half thousand episodes of the programme, but the other possibility is that not everything I talk about is what you want to hear, and if that’s the case, I’m not the only preacher over the last couple of thousand years who’s had that problem. In fact at one point, the things that Jesus said to the crowds were so unpalatable that they left Him in droves. John 6:65-66:

And Jesus said, ‘For this reason I have told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted by the Father.’ Because of this, many of His disciples turned back and no longer went about with Him.

What I’ve noticed is that when I talk about something that has a strong-felt need for many people, we get a huge response: Asking for the free booklet that goes with the series, requesting prayer, sharing hurts, and most often, those sorts of messages delve into difficulties in relationships or low self-esteem, fear, the need for faith to overcome adversity … You know, the things that universally create challenges and trials in our lives.

I wonder if that isn’t because in our rush to end our pain and suffering, we want some sort of quick fix: A bandaid, an aspirin, something to treat the symptom. And yet more often than not, those aches and pains that we experience in day-to-day life, they’re merely symptoms of other deeper underlying causes. Jesus actually talks a lot about those causes, those underlying diseases, and yet let me tell you, in those series of messages on this programme where we delve deeper, where we hear things from God that we may not want to hear, without fail, the listener response is sharply lower. Could it be that we’re more interested in that quick fix for the symptoms than dealing with the underlying disease?

That certainly seems to be where medicine’s headed these days, at least retail medicine when you go to see your local doctor. At least where I live, the family doctor’s practice of old has all but disappeared. Instead you go into one of these large practices now with multiple doctors, where you can no longer make an appointment.

You just get the next available doctor, and they pop you on the assembly line and in you go to be processed. More and more, people go in and they ask the doctor for antibiotics or painkillers, as though somehow it’s the patient’s role to self-diagnose and more and more, fed by the slick marketing of the drug companies, the doctors are just writing out a prescription and off you go. Problem solved!

Never mind that the heavy use of antibiotics is leading to the development of so-called superbugs, that are completely resistant to any form of treatment. Never mind that perhaps there’s something deeper, like diet or lifestyle or some hidden disease that’s causing the symptoms that you’re feeling. Never mind that the rates of obesity and metabolic syndrome, heart disease, stroke, Diabetes, are skyrocketing around the world; just write the prescription and be done with it.

Woohoo! “Berni, we don’t want to talk about the disease; just give us something that’ll provide a quick fix for my problems; a bandaid; an aspirin” … Now maybe that sounds a little bit harsh, but are you getting the picture?

I was watching a video recently, an amazing video on YouTube of an apostolic minister who was asked to address the United Nations’ General Assembly. Now this man, Reverend Lee Stoneking, had died of a massive heart attack at Sydney Airport of all places.

He’d been pronounced dead, and yet in the ambulance on the way back to the hospital, he came back to life. The paramedics were completely astounded! The blood had already started to coagulate in his extremities. He’d had no oxygen to the brain for over forty-five minutes. You know, just six minutes and the brain starts to die, and this man who’d experienced a resurrection (literally) spoke to the delegates of the United Nations’ General Assembly, and he said to them, “People, if you want to end violence, if you want to end the suffering, if you want to deal with the terrible problems and the atrocities that are going on in this world, then the only answer is this, Acts 2:38:

‘Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’.”

And you see, right there is the treatment for the disease that’s causing your aches and pains; your distresses and fears, but like Jesus, if I start talking about that sort of radical treatment, no doubt people will turn off the radio; no doubt people will walk away, as they turned away from Jesus there in John chapter 6:66. But listen to me, at the end of the day, if we want the life that Jesus promises, we need more than an aspirin. We need more than a handful of shallowness. We need to dive deep down to the root cause.

One of the funniest signs I’ve seen in a long time (on Facebook, of course) reads like this: ‘Everything happens for a reason and sometimes, that reason is that you’re stupid and you made bad decisions’. I do stupid things that cause pain, and so do you. We have wrong ways of thinking and seeing. We all get caught up in ourselves and forget God and forget others.

It’s so easy in this day and age, with the barrage of lies that cover our lives and penetrate our hearts, to end up in pain because we’ve headed off in the wrong direction, but listen to me: ‘Jesus Speaks, and Jesus Heals’, and if we want healing in our lives, then we need to listen to Jesus speak and experience the power of His healing touch.

That’s what this series of messages over the next few weeks is all about. That’s why I’ve called it ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’ – because I believe that Jesus wants to bring some serious healing into your life, and when we actually take the time to listen – I mean really listen to what Jesus has to say about the maladies that affect our lives, it just blows you away! That’s what the crowds experienced that followed Him around. Matthew 7:28-29:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, not as their scribes.

I have a friend who carries rather a lot more weight than he should – a lot more. I’ve spoken to him many times about the amount of sugar and refined carbohydrates that he eats and yet, to no avail. I know that if he turns away from the sugar and the refined carbohydrates, the weight will just fall off him. He’s older than me; he’s in his sixties; he has high blood pressure; high blood sugar, and he’s just an absolute multi for a heart attack or a stroke, and yet nothing changes. I can’t badger him into it; he has to decide for himself, so why doesn’t he change?

He’s not a bad person; he’s a great guy and frankly, I’d like him around for many more years to come, so why doesn’t he change? The same reason that you and I just cling on to the things in our lives that are robbing us of life itself, but there’s one thing that I have to share with you that can give you the power to change – the thing that astounded those people, the words of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, because it comes with authority from God.

It cuts straight to the heart of what’s going on in us, and it carries with it the power of God to make the changes in your life that you don’t have the power to make. My words can’t do that, but Jesus’ words can, because He is the Word of God. ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’. Are you ready for that sort of power in your life?

 

Pride and Prejudice

I was in a Christian leaders’ conference recently, and one of the speakers there (John Dixon was his name) spoke about communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ, but he came at that subject from a unique perspective. He looked at it through the prism of humility.

Now humility’s a funny thing because the moment you think you’re humble you’re not, and the moment you talk about being humble you’re definitely not. The point he was making was that beating people over the head with the so-called Good News ain’t going to do it – no, instead he said, “Humility is beautiful, and it’s attractive.” I sat and thought about that for a while and I realised he’s absolutely right.

Humility is beautiful: It is, and it is perhaps the most attractive form of love that you and I can have. See, Jesus humbled Himself on that cross. Philippians 2:5-8:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave. Being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

It’s worth pausing on those two phrases – emptied Himself and humbled Himself. Literally He laid His reputation; His life; His deity aside. He poured Himself out, literally emptied Himself of everything He was and had, and to humble yourself means to make yourself low. When you think about it, Jesus the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, had to come a long way down to make Himself low: Not just taking the form of a man, but then allowing Himself to be nailed to that cross.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

Let’s go back to something that Jesus said about pride and humility, although in this case He comes at it from the opposite direction. Let’s go to Matthew chapter 7 beginning at verse 1. Jesus said:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged, for with the judgment that you make, you will be judged, and the measure that you give will be the measure that you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye, or how can you say to the neighbour, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while a log is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

As I said earlier, one of the greatest evils in our lives is pride, because it spawns so much more sin in us and through us, and the way that pride manifests itself often is through judgement of others. Let me ask you: When was the last time you judged someone? Maybe you’ve grumbled about them either verbally or in your heart; maybe you’ve murmured about them; spread rumours about them; perhaps you’ve written them off as a loser or an idiot; maybe you’ve argued with them and your relationship with them is broken. Put it that way, and the chances are, it’s not all that long ago that you’ve judged someone.

Now, one of the reasons (in fact, the reason) that what we’re talking about here is so incredibly powerful is that we’re talking about the very words of Jesus, and the words of Jesus have the power to heal and to transform your life and mine in a way that nothing else and no one else can, and this passage comes in the middle of a real purple patch of teaching from Jesus early-on in the book of Matthew in the New Testament. His solution to many if not most of your relationship problems? Do not judge.

Now that’s easy to say, but it’s a whole bunch harder to do, which is why He goes on and gives us a couple of clear reasons why not to judge, and there’s a lot of power in those reasons.

Firstly, don’t judge because with the measure that you judge, you will be judged – by God and by other people. Judgment is the opposite of humility. Judgment comes out of pride, and that’s His second point. How come you can see the speck in your neighbour’s eye and you haven’t noticed the log in your own eye? First, get that log out of your own eye, so that you can see clearly enough and help your neighbour with the speck in his. Totally!

There’s the great leveller – the realisation that you and I have our blind spots and our weaknesses, and we do. Right? Who appointed you and me judge, jury and executioner?

Now at this point, I want you to take a look at the sharp contrast between the Jesus that we read about in Philippians chapter 2, the one who emptied Himself, the one who humbled Himself, the one that we’re supposed to be like, and the person with the log in their eye … and that would be you and me.

Jesus had and has every right to judge. He’s God, and He’s perfect, unlike you and me, and yet unlike you and me instead of judging, He dies for the very sinners who prance around in pride as though we’re perfect, when in reality we know we aren’t. When we criticise and we grumble and we complain, all acts of pride. ‘Wake up! What’s the matter with you?’ That’s what Jesus is saying, because that pride is a burden too heavy to carry. That pride becomes so incredibly heavy that carrying it around day after day drains the strength and the very life out of you, which is why Jesus also said (in Matthew 11:28-30):

All you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, come to me, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

One of the symptoms that many people in this world experience is the exhaustion and the stress that come from carrying the burden of pride around with them day after day, and you know that feeling when you carry something heavy around, the longer you carry it, the heavier it gets? The more it hurts, and the more the pain screams out at you, “Stop this!” and the answer, the solution to that pain is not to take an aspirin; the answer is to get rid of the load. The answer is not to treat the symptoms; the answer is to deal with the cause and lay down the load.

Be honest. Is pride doing you in? Is pride and prejudice; is the sin of judgment doing you in? Robbing you of life? Causing you pain? Because if it is, it’s time to bring it to Jesus who is lowly and humble of heart: This Jesus who emptied Himself and humbled Himself to die for your sins.

See, that’s the Jesus who’s ready and waiting to take this load off you; to guide you to a better place; to heal you of the sin and the judgment, and the pride. That’s why there’s so much power in the words of Jesus. Because He’s not just about the talk; He’s about the action. He will forgive you. He will send His Spirit to set you free. He will give you the power to live a different way, and that all starts here and now. All it needs is for you and me to stump up to Jesus and to say to Him, “Yep, that’s me! That’s what I’ve been struggling with, and I’ve been too proud to admit it, but today, I want to be free. Jesus, help me”, and that step of humility is a step into the healing power of Jesus.

It’s no co-incidence we’re together today, you know. It really isn’t. ‘Jesus Speaks and Jesus Heals’ and today we’ve heard Him speak, so I’m believing that from this moment on, there is going to be some serious healing in your life, some serious Holy Spirit-power in your life, some serious freedom in your life, in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

 

The Age of Grace

We’ve talked about two things today: Firstly, the fact that Jesus wants to bring healing into your life, and secondly that one of the most powerful forms of healing that you or I can possibly ever experience is the healing that comes when we forgive someone, but there’s another side to that coin of healing and forgiveness, and that’s the healing that we experience when we finally come to grips with the fact that in Jesus, through Jesus, you and I are forgiven.

As a teenager many, many years ago, I accepted Jesus into my life, but then I strayed away; I got into all sorts of stuff. I’ll share with you a little next week on the programme how the love of money caused so much pain and destruction in my life, but the point right now is that because I was into things that I knew that any loving God couldn’t possibly agree with or accept or condone, that guilt kept me from turning my life back to Him.

I always knew He was there, although at the point of almost taking my own life and then crying out to Him, I really wasn’t all that sure anymore because as I saw it, I had strayed so far away. As my guilt stopped me from turning back to Him, the worse things became. It was only when I was at the end of my tether that I cried out, and I know that today, there is someone out there who kind of understands what I’m talking about.

It resonates with you and you’ve heard the words of Jesus today, the powerful words of Jesus, but you’ve strayed so far; you’ve done so many bad things; you can’t begin to imagine that God would have you back. If that’s you, then my friend, today I have some good news for you, and that good news can be summed up in a single word: Grace. Listen carefully to the words of the apostle Paul because through him, God is about to speak His grace His mercy, His forgiveness, into your heart. Romans chapter 5 beginning at verse 1:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we actually have peace with God through Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access into this grace in which we now stand. You see, we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God, and not only that but we also boast in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance; endurance produces character; and character produces hope, and this hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, although maybe for a good person someone might actually dare to die, but God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by His blood, we will be saved through Him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, then much more surely having been reconciled, we’ll be saved by His life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

See, that’s grace! And if you’re ready to accept God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s love right this moment, then why don’t you pray this prayer with me?

Father, I have heard about Jesus today, and I know that I so desperately need Your mercy and Your grace. I believe that Jesus is Your Son. I believe Jesus actually died for me, so that You can forgive my sins. Please, forgive me through Jesus. Please take me just as I am, love me and hold me, and fill me with Your Holy Spirit, to give me the power to change. Speak Your Word into my heart. Heal my diseases, in Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Friend, if you have prayed that prayer, you are forgiven, and now you belong to God. Don’t leave it there. Find a Bible-believing church where the love of Jesus flows, and grow in your relationship with Him. Be blessed, as you receive Jesus into your heart.

You know what they say … if all else fails, pray. And frankly, that’s how many people treat prayer. And yes, God will show up in a crisis, but the most powerful form of prayer is pre-emptive prayer. The sort of prayer we pray ahead of time. And that’s the sort of prayer we’re going to chat about today on the program. Powerful, pre-emptive prayer.

 

Pre–emptive Prayer

My kids are all grown up now, but I remember when they were young … Christmas morning, they’d get a bike, or some present that needed to be assembled or put together. Now I have to tell you, my mechanical skills are not all that good, in fact they’re shocking. I can make a piano sing, I can do a whole lot of other things, but putting things together, that’s just not my gig.

So I would dread Christmas mornings where there was something to put together. I would always muck it up, I’d get cranky with it, whatever it was, and eventually, with steam coming out of my ears, my lovely wife would say, “well darling, why don’t you read the instructions?”

Read the instructions! What?! I guess, if all else fails, read the instructions. I’m sure there’s many a dad who’s been there, done that, and got the t–shirt. Reading the instructions was a matter of last resort. It’s something you only did when everything else, including your personal mechanical brilliance, had failed.

And that, as I said, is how many people treat prayer. Don’t know where you’re at, whether you believe in Jesus, or whether prayer is something that, well, honestly, really only happens for you in the worst of circumstances, as an absolute last resort, but prayer is often just that.

I remember a chaplain in the Army, when I was an Army officer, telling me that there were no atheists in foxholes. And that’s true – when the bullets are flying and the bombs are going off around us, well, that’s enough to drive anyone to prayer.

But pre-emptive action is always better than remedial action. Let me say that again … pre-emptive action is always better than remedial action. It’s better not to drink and drive, than to be in rehabilitation after a car accident, right? It’s better to get your diet and exercise sorted out, rather than to be on life support in hospital following a heart attack, no matter how good the hospital happens to be.

Well actually the same is true about prayer. And that’s exactly what Jesus taught. And truly, if you want a better life, if you want a life with more peace and power, joy and love … then pre-emptive prayer is exactly what you’ve been looking for.

I know, I know – prayer isn’t as popular as talking about better relationships for instance, but then with pre-emptive prayer, truly you are going to have better relationships.

There was a young boy who had a demon. His father brought him to the disciples at a time when Jesus was busy somewhere else. The disciples, they tried to cast the demon out, but to no avail. Jesus comes along and casts the demon out in an instant. Let’s pick it up, Mark chapter 9, verses 28 and 29:

When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ and He said to them, ‘This kind can come out only through prayer and fasting’.

Now, just think about that for a moment. They’re out there, dad brings his son along who is convulsing and carrying on and manifesting demons. When do you have time for prayer and fasting in all of that?

The answer is: you don’t. It’s something you had to do beforehand, pre-emptively. Because of your earnest prayer beforehand, you would already be in a place where you had the power to do what is needed. There’s no other way of interpreting what Jesus said here to the disciples.

This is how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. Matthew chapter 6, verses 6 to 13:

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; see, they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. But truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father in Heaven knows what you need even before you ask him.

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. And Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

Unfortunately we don’t have the time to go through that in detail – in fact I’ve written a whole book called ‘Unlocking the Power of Prayer’, just about this one prayer.

But see how it’s a prayer of humility – a prayer about God’s name being lifted up, His kingdom coming, His will being done … and just one request for ourselves, enough food to eat for today. And then an exhortation to forgive (we’ll talk more about that after the break) and a request for protection from the enemy.

See, it’s a prayer that’s more about God than it is about us. It’s a form of prayer that has the power to change our hearts and transform our lives, to get the focus off us and back onto God.

Just stand back from it for a minute and compare that to how you normally pray. It’s a sobering comparison isn’t it, because more often than not, our prayer is a shopping list of stuff for us – what we want. Sure, we might prayer for other people, or a country following a natural disaster, but mostly we pray for ourselves, just reinforcing our selfishness.

Imagine how different your perspective on life would be, if most of your prayer was about God and his will. Imagine how different your life would be, if most of your prayer was about God and His will. A person who prays like that, is the sort of person that can step in at a moment’s notice and cast that demon out of that boy, because they’re filled with the power of God. Because their life is surrendered to God. Because their heart is aching to see His will done on this earth and their eyes are open looking around to see what God’s up to and how they can be involved for Him and not for them.

Do you see? Do you see how incredibly different your life could be?

 

Forgive and Forget

Whenever I talk about forgiveness on the program, I get a big response from people who are listening, much of it telling me about the terrible things that have happened to them and how difficult it is to forgive. And it’s true. When someone has hurt you deeply it is incredibly hard to forgive. Some of the stories that people share, they are enough to make your heart break.

The question that I’m asked over and over again though, is this, “Okay, we know we’re supposed to forgive, but how do we actually forgive other people? I mean, how? I know that I should, I just don’t know how?” And that, I have to tell you, is a really good question.

I’ve had a couple of people in my life who hurt me incredibly deeply through serious betrayal. It’s a couple of decades ago now, but it was such a deep hurt that if I hadn’t learned how to forgive them, it would still be eating away at me like a cancer today. And that’s why today we’re going to talk about HOW to forgive. Not through anything clever I’ve come up with, but through what Jesus has to say.

And that’s what this series of messages ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’ is all about. You may remember last week on the program we had a look at this Scripture verse, Matthew chapter 7, verses 28 and 29:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

There’s something powerful and healing about Jesus speaking directly into your life. That’s why we’re spending this time in what I call the purple patch of teaching in the first few chapters of Matthews’s Gospel – because I know that Jesus wants to bring some healing into your life through what He has to say.

Yep, there are some amazing miracles in Chapter 8 – and we’ll talk about a few of those at the end of this series. But my observation is that when Jesus speaks into your heart, when the Holy Spirit takes God’s Word and writes it on your heart, there are more miracles that happen through that, than we ever see at a healing service. Amen?

And if we can get Jesus’ plan for getting forgiveness happening in your heart, hey that’s a miracle! It’s a miracle that sets you free from the hurts of the past. It’s a miracle that I’ve experienced in my life.

Max, my producer here in the studio, and I, a few years ago, were sitting down for a cup of tea after one of our sessions together. Now he knows some of the terrible things that have happened to me in the past. And he said something along these lines, he said, “It’s amazing how completely God has set you free from those things.”

Do you know what? I really hadn’t thought of it that way, but what he said is absolutely true. And with all my heart, I believe it’s because I get to spend a lot of time in God’s Word to do what I do, and God’s Word has taken root in my heart and sprouted and set me free.

I am amazed how we go chasing after help for our troubles here and there and everywhere else, as though somehow an aspirin and a band-aid are going to help the deep hurts in our hearts. If you want to pull out a weed in your garden, you take it out by its roots, yeah?

Well it’s the same with the hurts in our lives. There are plenty of people out there who will pander to your symptoms, but only Jesus will heal your diseases. Here’s what Jesus said about forgiveness, Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 to 14:

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And do not bring us into a time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you.

I want you to notice something about this teaching about forgiveness. It comes in the context of what? Of prayer. And that … that is the key to experiencing forgiveness. Finally being able to forgive someone for what they did to you and being set free from the burden of their wrong towards you. And unless you’re set free, you’re going to allow them to keep on hurting you.

That’s why forgiveness is so important. And actually, this is Jesus saying this, not me. God forgiving you is conditional on you forgiving others and the way you do that, is to pray for them. Again, here it is, Jesus … Matthew chapter 5, verses 43 to 45:

You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, he sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Let me tell you something, the more you pray for the people who hurt you, the more God will set you free from the unforgiveness. The more you pray for the people who hurt you, the more the pain goes away, the more your life comes back and the more you are able to forgive them. Look, it may not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Forgiveness is when, in our hearts, we give up the right to punish those who have hurt us, or to get recompense, or even an apology from them. I’ve heard it said, you can’t forgive someone unless they ask you for forgiveness. But that’s not true. Jesus went and died on the cross for you, before you ever asked for His forgiveness.

Pray for your enemies, and if you can, bless them. Keep doing that faithfully and Jesus will do something for you that you yourself cannot do. He will bring healing and forgiveness into your heart. He will set you free – and when He sets you free, you will be free indeed. You see, it’s the Jesus plan … and it actually works!

 

Money – Servant or Master?

For many years of my life, I was addicted to chocolate. There’s one particular brand here in Australia that most of the children of my generation grew up with, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate. Now sure, you can buy fine Swiss chocolates like Lindt and others, but the staple chocolate, if I can call it that, of my generation was Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Still today, just as I sit here and think about it and speak about it, things start happening in my brain. I can see the wrapper, I can smell the block of chocolate, I can taste that smooth, velvety, sweet taste as I put a few squares in my mouth … and it’s years since I’ve had a piece of that chocolate!

It turns out that chocolate is a mood altering food. When you eat chocolate, your brain increases its levels of the calming neurotransmitter serotonin and it makes you feel better. On top of that, chocolate contains a compound called phenyl ethylamine, which acts like an amphetamine, stimulating the release of dopamine – and dopamine is your reward drug. It results in a mild antidepressant effect and ends up prompting blissful emotions.

So that’s why often, people who are feeling down or depressed will turn to chocolate. It’s a mood altering substance, it’s pretty amazing stuff! You can see why people become chocoholics – and I truly am a reforming chocoholic, I rarely touch the stuff these days.

But the downside of all of that, is that most chocolate is full of sugar. Eat too much of it and you’ll come off that high very quickly into a well-documented, scientifically understood sugar crash. Eat too much of it on a constant basis, and you’ll end up with fatty liver, a precursor to dangerous and debilitating cirrhosis of the liver, high triglycerides in your blood, which are one of the best indicators of heart attack and stroke, and high insulin levels which will cause weight gain and ultimately diabetes.

So, why the science lesson on chocolate? Simply to make this point – inevitably something that promises everything, like chocolate, will have a downside. Too much of a good thing, leads to bad things. And it’s exactly the same with money, or at least, our desire for money. Money is a mood altering compound.

Jesus had more to say about money, or, more accurately our desire for wealth, than pretty much any other subject. Because He knew, and He knows, that wealth is even more addictive, and even more dangerous than chocolate. Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 to 21:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust will consume and where thieves will break in and steal; but instead store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.

Notice here how Jesus isn’t talking so much about money per se, but about treasures. The original Greek word used there means a place in which good and precious things are laid up, a treasury, a storehouse, a repository. The best way to think of it in today’s terms, is perhaps someone who has precious jewellery.

I was in Dubai recently and I saw an amazing necklace – it must have had 50 or 60 four or five carat diamonds in it. So I walked into the store and I asked how much? Oh, about 5.8 million US dollars.

Now, if you owned that necklace, I am sure you’d have a safe in your house and you’d keep it locked away in that safe. So that safe, would be your treasury, the place where you protect your wealth. And so Jesus is using that picture here not to talk about the necklace itself, not to talk about the money itself, but our attitude towards it.

When our money becomes our treasure, it becomes something that we protect, our life starts to revolve around it and so your heart becomes tied up with it. And when your heart starts to crave for it, you want more and more … just like the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate I was talking about before.

So why is this a problem? Surely there’s nothing inherently bad about money? No, not at all. The problem comes when our desire for money turns our heart away from God, and towards the pursuit of wealth. I personally have been there, I’ve got the t-shirt and let me tell you, it wasn’t a pretty time in my life. In fact, it almost led to my complete ruin and destruction.

God loves you, God loves me and He wants the best for us. His very best for us, is Jesus. But wherever your treasure is, there your heart will also be. So in other words, you start storing up treasures for yourself in your heart, then your heart will grow hard and cold and strong like the metal of that safe, to protect your treasures. And that’s why the very next thing that Jesus said on this is also true. Matthew chapter 6, verse 24:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.

In other words, you can’t be a dog with two masters. Because if one says stay and the other says go, which one are you going to obey? You cannot serve both God and wealth at the same time.

Interesting again here, Jesus doesn’t use the word money, instead He talks about wealth. The Aramaic word is mammon, which means again, treasure or riches or storehouse. It carries with it the sense that the money has become more than just money, but instead it’s more like an idol, wealth personified if you will.

In other words, the problem is not the money – it’s our desire for money, because the desire ends up being the guiding force of your life. You see the problem. You cannot be a dog with two masters, you’ll either serve the one or the other, but not both. So money ends up supplanting God in your life, and there are consequences to that. 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 9 and 10:

Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and they are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

Speaking as someone who used to want to be rich, I can tell you that my desires were indeed harmful, that I was indeed plunged into ruin and destruction, I was indeed pierced with many pains … to the point where I almost took my own life. All for the love of money.

The thing with chocoholics is that they don’t want to own up to their addiction. My dad had diabetes, he always had some chocolate tucked away in a drawer somewhere that he was eating, hidden from the rest of us … until eventually it killed him.

And the thing with money-holics, wealth-holics, is that it’s exactly the same. Money is such a good thing that we kid ourselves, we delude ourselves, and we go on pursuing it, to our own destruction. Right in the middle of his teaching about wealth and the desire for it, Jesus said this:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness. (Matthew 6:22-23)

That’s what He’s talking about is self–delusion. So I’m going to put a challenge here before you right now. Is your desire for wealth drawing you away from God and ruining your life? Does retail therapy give you that dopamine hit and make you feel better?

Are you deluding yourself, kidding yourself, telling yourself you don’t have a problem, but really, you’re hiding this nasty little secret in your heart, a heart by the way, which is starting to grow hard and cold towards God? Is that what’s happening in your life?

Question: how much of your brain time do you spend worrying about things that are out of your control? Really … you might actually be shocked at the answer to that question.

 

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

One of the things that we’re all keen on these days is transformation. Becoming a better person, ditching some of the baggage we’ve been carrying around, lightening the load and living a better life. Is there anyone who doesn’t want that in their lives today?

But if you’re anything like me, you’ve tried all the self–help programs, and they work for a while, but then you slip right back into the same–old, same–old and nothing ever changes for real. Does that sound familiar?

Well, in a sense that’s what this series – ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’ – is all about. Because when Jesus speaks, powerful healing comes into our lives.

I can honestly say that the most powerful changes that have occurred in my life over the last couple of decades walking with the Lord, have come when I’ve heard His Word, taken it into my heart, and allowed the Holy Spirit to do His thing in me.

That, and only that, is what brings lasting change. And so today, we’re going to continue taking an in-depth look at this purple patch of teaching and healing in chapters 5 to 8 of the Gospel of Matthew, in the first book in the New Testament, where Jesus completely blows people away with the power of what He has to say. You may recall over the last couple of weeks, we had a look at this Scripture, Matthew chapter 7, verses 28 and 29:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, not as one of their scribes.

That’s what happens when you hear Jesus speak – it’s a work of power and a work of healing. And today, we’re going to see what He has to say about all the worrying that so many people do. We worry about this, we worry about that. It never achieves anything except to make us feel miserable, but still we worry about this stuff, right? STUFF! Stuff that’s outside our control. Stuff that we don’t quite understand. Stuff that causes hidden fears.

Well, let me ask you something. Do you want to be set free from the scourge of all that worry in your life? Would you like complete healing from all that worry? Because that’s what I believe Jesus wants to do for you today – remember, ‘Jesus speaks, Jesus heals’, and I’m believing for some mighty healing in your life today. Well, what did Jesus say about all this worrying that we do? Matthew chapter 6, verses 25 to 34:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will I eat?’ or ‘What will I drink?’ or ‘What will I wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all of these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Now whenever you see a ‘therefore’ in Scripture, you always have to ask yourself: what’s the ‘therefore’, there for? And in this case, Jesus starts His whole bit of teaching about worrying with a ‘therefore’. Well, in doing that, He’s pointing back to what He has just said about money and wealth, which is this – Matthew chapter 6, verse 24:

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The thing that we worry about most– not exclusively, but mostly – is money. Somehow we’ve been programmed, haven’t we, to believe that we need more and more of the stuff, and if we don’t seem to have enough coming in through the door, then we have to hit that big, red panic button that we all have somewhere deep inside.

And the reason that we worry so much about this, Jesus is saying here, is that we’ve started to be influenced more by the reality of wealth (or the lack of it) than the reality of God.

We were made to walk in the cool of the morning with God, just as Adam and Eve did. We’ve been made, you and I, to be with God and to trust Him. But these days, just as our kids through their 24/7 connectedness to social media are being more influenced by forces outside the home, than by their parents in the home, so you and I are being influenced more by the world than by God.

Because many people have made a god out of money and wealth, an act of idolatry that squeezed the one true God out of their lives. And with this bit of teaching here, Jesus is trying to refocus us back on what’s important.

If you worship quicksand, of course you’re going to panic when it gives way and start sinking. But get a grip here on reality, life is about so much more than what we eat and drink and what we wear. I mean, look at the birds of the air – they don’t labour, and God feeds them! Aren’t you worth so much more than them? And look at the grass of the field, those beautiful lilies out there – not even Solomon with all his wealth was as beautiful as them. And yet God loves you so much more, you are worth so much more to Him than the grass of the field.

We’ve all been in that place in life where we don’t have enough. Sometimes it’s money, other times it’s health, other times it’s love or nurture. Whatever it is, we’ve all been in that place and we’ve looked at the reality that we simply don’t have enough and so we panic.

Some people, many people are in a constant state of worry. All we ever see is that we don’t have enough, and so we churn that around and over and over and over again as though somehow that’s going to make things better. Well get a revelation today, it’s not going to make anything better. Who by worrying can add a single hour to the span of their life? So come on, what’s Jesus’ answer? What are the words of healing that He has to bring into your life today, here and now? Here they are:

But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

In other words, refocus. Get your eyes off the things that you’re worrying about, and focus them back on God. Go hard after the lordship and the reign of God in your life. Focus completely back on Him, and living your life for Him. Get your priorities back in order.

Remember God? The God with the power to create the whole universe? The same God who gave us all of creation? The same God who loves you so much more than the birds of the air or the grass of the field – both of whom He provides for abundantly? Remember that God?

Get your eyes back on Him. Worship Him. Love Him. Serve Him. Live your whole life for Him. Not the shallow stuff of this world. Not the trinkets that will pass away. Not all that rubbish that somehow we’ve come to worship. NO! Focus on God.

And you know what’s going to happen when you take Jesus advice, when you accept His Words into your heart and start acting on them? I’ll tell you, because I know. The worry just disappears. When you experience the love of Jesus in your heart, there’s no room for worry – it just doesn’t make sense anymore. And right there, in that place, is the healing that you’ve always been looking for.

 

Knowing God – Really

I’ll put something out there and see what you think: I believe that many people who in their heart of hearts believe in Jesus, have a distorted view of God. A completely distorted view of God. A bit radical, I know, but hear me out.

Either we think that God is some ‘sugar daddy’, who’s meant to come along and give us whatever our spoiled little hearts desire, or we believe that God might be a God who blesses other people, but me? I mean, look at my life! No, God’s not in the business of blessing me, no way.

Now you see a lot of that ‘sugar daddy’ model of God out there. I was at a church service once and a well-known TV preacher from America was visiting. The preacher at the end of the service told everyone to get out their purses or their wallets. Now, I was just a new Christian at the time, so I did it, although I was feeling a bit uncomfortable. Then he told us to lift our purse or our wallet above our heads and close our eyes. Well, at this point I’m going, “no, no way! What’s going on here?” But everyone else in the auditorium did just that, about 1500 people.

Then the guy up the front prays that each one of us would become a millionaire. Now these days, if you own even an apartment or a house around where I live you’re pretty much a millionaire. But back then, that was an enormous amount of money. And people are shouting, “amen” and “hallelujah”! And I’m standing there, just a new Christian mind you, not really sure, but with this sense of outrage welling up inside me. I wanted to shout out, “No! Jesus died even without the clothes on His back, are you people for real?”

And now, a couple of decades on, that’s still the sort of stuff you see peddled again and again in the name of God. I asked one of my lecturers at Bible College about this a few weeks later, and He smiled and said, maybe it would have been more Biblical to pray for the person next to you to become a millionaire – he was joking.

It’s sad, and please if you see that sort of stuff being peddled in your church, reject it. God is not a ‘sugar daddy’ who showers us with all sorts of gifts that we desire.

But then again, there are people who believe that God is never going to bless them. I had an email from a young man in the UK recently, and he was asking me why it is that nothing good ever seemed to happen in his life? I mean, I dream (he said), I plan, I work hard but I never achieve my goals. Doesn’t God want me to be happy? Why is this happening to me? And can I tell you, there are plenty of people in that boat too. And whether you’re torn to one extreme or the other, can I tell you a lot of people really don’t know the Father Heart of God, they’re being led astray and they need to find healing, deep healing inside which only comes when we know the true nature of God.

As I’ve said many times over the course of this series, there is no better place to find that healing than in the words of Jesus. Have a listen to this, Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 to 11:

Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you, if your child asks for bread, will give them a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will you give them a snake? Well if you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

So according to Jesus, is God a good God who wants to bless you? Yes He is. Of course this passage has been used over and over again by proponents of the so–called prosperity Gospel who will tell you that yes, if you want it, God will give you a BMW 7 series, two of them if you want them, and a big house, and all the riches you want, if only you will support their ministry. But the bit that they’re missing in this powerful piece of teaching from Jesus Himself, is that the only sorts of gifts that a good God gives to His children are good gifts.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

Did you get that? Good gifts, good things. Things that are good for you. The powerful reinforcement of that is the parallel that Jesus draws here with human parents. I had great parents growing up. My dad was a great dad. He worked so hard for me, having immigrated to Australia after World War II, having fought in the German Army on the Russian front, having experienced starvation and deprivation and three years in a POW camp. My dad wanted the best for my sister and me, and he worked so hard to get it.

He wanted the best education for us, he worked long hours to pay for that, as did my mother I might add. But he was no pushover. He was no ‘sugar daddy’. He didn’t shower me with gifts and pamper me and tell me that I was the centre of the universe, the way some parents do these days. He didn’t gloss over my rebellions, pat me on the head and say, “it’s okay Berni, I love you, you can behave how you want.”

No, I remember being disciplined by my father. I remember the odd belting. I remember being driven hard. I remember being taught how to serve others – it was my chore each evening after school not just to polish my own shoes, but my father’s shoes too. I had to help with the dishes and when I was old enough mow the lawn. He allowed me to bear the consequences of my own mistakes, something that parents these days seem to want to rob their children of, in their desire to pamper them.

My father only gave me good gifts – some of those gifts were real blessings to me at the time, others, like the discipline and the training, I hated. They only turned out to be good gifts in my eyes, as I looked back on them years later. Was he a perfect father? No. And that’s the point that Jesus makes.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

When it comes to knowing the heart of God, whether it’s to bless you or not, and what that blessing looks like, the power of Jesus’ healing words here come from the comparison to good parenting. And God is the ultimate Father. The perfect Father. The Dad who knows how to bless you with truly good things – things that will make you healthy and strong, humble and loving, things that will make you look and sound more and more like Jesus.

Let me come back to the question I asked you earlier. How well do you know God? What do you believe about what He wants for your life? Is He a God of blessing or not? Well, here, through His powerful words, Jesus is bringing some healing to somebody’s heart today. Yes He is a good God. He’s the best dad that there’s ever been or ever will be. And when the evidence appears to contradict that fact, then remember what a good dad is meant to be and what he’s meant to do. Hebrews chapter 12, verses 9 to 11:

Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not even more be willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

No, not everything that God dishes up seems like a blessing, and not all of it feels all that good at the time. But with the benefit of hindsight, if we’ve allowed ourselves to be trained through those times, when we’re dining out on the peaceful fruit of righteousness, Christ–likeness, oh yeah, God is a good God who gives us all good things. So seek, ask, knock … and all good things will be given to you.

 

A Transformed Life

I was chatting with a friend of mine on the phone the other day. He’s a farmer who lives a hard life. He was out on his farm early the other morning and he had a fall that knocked him out. Out on his own, he came to, his shoulder and arm were dislocated, he was in a lot of pain – he’s not a young man – and he thought this could be the end of him.

You know what he said to me about that incident? He said, “I was in serious trouble, but seriously, I wasn’t troubled.”

See, that rocked me. How powerful is that? Does this guy have an easy life? No. But there’s a powerful force working within him, when even in the most dire of circumstances, even at the point when he thought, this might be it … he was at peace. He was in serious trouble, but he wasn’t troubled. Seriously! Here is a man who truly knows God. Here is a man who understands the good things that God is doing in his life.

There haven’t been any flashy miracles of healing in this man’s life. Sure, flashy miracles, the sort that Jesus performed, they are awesome, right? But the miracle of the Holy Spirit working away in him, as he labours long hours in all sorts of weather on that farm, the miracle of the Holy Spirit transforming his life, bringing him peace, bringing him courage when he needs it – that is just awesome.

Give me that sort of miracle any time – the miracle of a transformed life. The miracle of deep healing within. The miracle of discovering real life on that difficult road. The healing that comes when we are finally we’re set free from the shackles that this world would bind us with.

‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus heals’ – That’s the name of this series of messages and it is so apt, so appropriate. Because when Jesus speaks, healing flows, life-transforming power flows.

Have you heard Jesus speaking today? Then may His healing flow abundantly into your heart. May you have the abundant life that he came to give you. May the foundations of your life be built on solid ground rather than sinking sand. If I’m honest with myself, I think that only some of my foundations at this point in my life are on solid ground and others are still built on sand. I think there are a lot more on solid ground today than there were maybe five years ago, but the renovation of my life is an ongoing, work in progress.

Just the other day, I was reading God’s Word early in the morning and He confronted me about an attitude that I was harbouring towards someone. I mean really confronted me, because that’s what’s needed when we’re deluding ourselves. And we do delude ourselves don’t we – we’ll talk a lot more about that next week. But for now, the Bible has another word for self-delusion – God’s Word calls it a stronghold. Have a listen, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 4 and 5:

For the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

According to God’s Word here, a stronghold is an attitude in our heart, an argument, a proud obstacle that we raise up against God and it requires divine power to destroy that – and remember, here the apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthian church, so strongholds are in fact arguments and proud obstacles in the hearts of believers – God’s people.

My definition of a stronghold is that it’s something you hold onto real strong – and while you’re holding onto that, you can’t let go to take hold of the blessings of God. What’s required to destroy those strongholds in your heart? Human weapons? No. Nothing I say can destroy the strongholds in your heart. What’s required is divine power – and that power comes from the Word of Christ that you have heard today.

Will you take every thought captive to obey Christ? Will you be set free by Jesus today? Will you? Because when ‘Jesus speaks, Jesus heals’.

 

You’ve heard that saying “life wasn’t meant to be easy”. Well, we all have, and here’s the thing: When you hear it, it can be quite discouraging. Why? Well, (A) because we know it’s true, and (B) because as you look at your life, your today, your tomorrow, well … it’s just not a very encouraging thought now, is it?

 

Life Wasn’t Meant to be Easy

Well, yeah, life wasn’t meant to be easy. How many times have you heard that and thought to yourself, “ain’t that just the truth?” The times in my life when everything’s been going my way, everything has been going swimmingly well, everything has just been hunky-dory and tickety-boo, let me tell you, have been very few and far between. I’m talking everything – every part of my life.

Now don’t get me wrong; I haven’t had a bad life. I love everything I’m involved in and I’m blessed with a wonderful wife and great kids; I’m safe; I’m provided-for by God, but there’s always something, isn’t there? One thing that seems to rob us of our peace and our joy.

I’m sure it’s the same with you, too. I’m praying that there have been some truly awesome times in your life, but probably at the moment, it’s just something out there: A person; a relationship; some work-situation; maybe a health issue or a family issue or a finance issue; something that’s taking the shine off things, and then add to that that God seems to demand things of you a lot of the time that you don’t want to do or to give. Have you noticed that? He can be a tad pesky that way, if we’re listening to Him at all. We all have that one sin in our lives that seems to be our Achilles heel; our particular weakness; the one thing that He wants us to give up, and we struggle to obey.

Yeah, there’s always something. Surely if God loves us, He’d want to make it just a bit easier for us than what it is. Last week on the programme, we talked about the idea of God as a sugar daddy who showers you constantly with gifts and blessings and affirmations. Surely if God loves you, isn’t that how He treats you? I mean, surely. If believing in Jesus is about grace, the free, unmerited favour of God, that’s how it should be! Right? And then you remember that universal truth: Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

How do you reconcile those two: The empirical real-life evidence of the struggle you’re going through on the one had, and the apparent Biblical truth that God loves you and wants to bless you – something you want to believe, by the way, with all your heart?

Well, the honest truth is that a lot of people don’t reconcile the two. They can’t understand how those two realities, our struggles and God’s goodness, can co-exist. Maybe if you’re living on Struggle Street at the moment, or perhaps you’re just taking a short trip down Struggle Lane, I want to see the words of Jesus bring some powerful healing into your heart right now, so have a listen to what Jesus has to say. Matthew 7:13-14:

‘Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.’

I know what you’re thinking, “Berni, all that is is bad news! All that is is Jesus telling us that life wasn’t meant to be easy! What’s the good of that?” Am I right? Well, the first step to healing, the first step to discovering God’s real blessings in your life, is accepting the reality, and the reality is that following Jesus isn’t easy. It’s counter-cultural. The world wants you to follow them down that nice, gentle, well-paved road to destruction. Sure, believe all perversions that people are now saying are normal, equal and free. Sure, be selfish! Sure, live for yourself. But Jesus is calling you to go a hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction. He’s calling you to swim against the tide; to be ridiculed; to lose things because you do the right thing. What for? For the prize of course, or did you miss what Jesus said about the prize on the other side of that narrow gate; at the end of that hard road; where does it lead? It leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Remember this is Jesus, who just a few verses before in this same chapter said to you:

‘Ask and it will be given to you. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you, if your child asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!’

Blessing … the blessing of God, the good things of God, come right smack-bang in the middle of the tough journey. The problem is, all too often, we think that the blessing of God is the removing of suffering and replacing it with gifts and presents and all sorts of goodies. Well, ok, sometimes that happens. Sometimes that’s God’s will, but more often than not, the good things that He wants for us are to grow our character; to make us more humble; to help us to learn to serve people who don’t deserve it; to discover our lives in Christ in a way that we never imagined possible.

Let me tell you, some of the greatest blessings that I’ve experienced in my life have come in the darkest times. They had nothing to do with changing my circumstances, but everything to do with changing me. Get a grip. Get a revelation today: Life wasn’t meant to be a cakewalk. Life wasn’t meant to be one great big party. Following Jesus is hard some days. In fact, following Jesus is hard most days. Will you follow Him anyway?

Following Jesus means losing things; losing the world’s approval; the money we might have earned; the comfort we might have had. Will you follow Him anyway? Because when we live our lives like that, in the knowledge of the trials but experiencing His blessings, hey, that’s the place of healing. That’s the place where we find our lives. That’s the place we experience a joy and a freedom and a sense of fulfilment that we never, ever, ever thought was possible.

 

Don’t Kid Yourself

You know the problem with me sitting here and chatting with you and a stack of other people about self-delusion? Well, none of us believes that we suffer from the problem! That’s the delusion, but before you change channels, just humour me for a moment. Before we start with the disease, let’s just go to some of the symptoms and see if you can identify them in your life.

Here are some of the symptoms of self-delusion: The really big one is, you keep telling yourself it’s all ok, but deep-down, you have a nagging suspicion that it’s not. People criticise you and you don’t want to hear, even though in your heart of hearts, you’re afraid they might have a point. You’ve set your life on a certain course towards success, and each time you hit a milestone of success, after an initial flurry, it somehow seems hollow. You’re longing for something, but you just can’t put a finger on what that something is. You’ve tried a lot of things, but nothing ends up delivering that one something that you’re becoming increasingly desperate to find.

My hunch is that there are more than a few people listening to this thinking to themselves, “Hang on, how does Berni know that about me?” Well, quite simply, they’re the primary symptoms of self-delusion, and they’re symptoms that I’m all too well-acquainted with, being as I am a recovering ‘self-delusionist’ (if there is such a word), and I reckon that the biggest bit of self-delusion that many of us carry on with is that we’re disciples of Jesus Christ.

Now that may sound just a tad confronting, and if it is, know that it’s meant to be: Not because I’m trying to be some self-righteous preacher telling you that I have it all right and you don’t, but because I’m a fellow-sinner, travelling on a not dissimilar road to yours, who has had the privilege of having Jesus speak into my heart about this very thing. Confronting? Yeah, you betcha.

So what does Jesus have to say about your self-delusion and mine? Does He have anything there, any wisdom, any healing, any power, to set us free so that we can finally find that something that we’ve been searching for all this time? Matthew 7:21-23:

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and do many deeds of power in Your name?’ Then I will declare to them: I never knew you. Go away from Me, you evildoers.

Yeah, I told you this was confronting. Jesus often is. He doesn’t namby-pamby around; He tells it the way it is. I know, I know. We want to think of this Jesus as some nice soft warm cuddly fluffy toy, that we can cuddle so we can feel better. Does Jesus love you? Of course He does, but His love is often a tough love: A love that cuts through our self-delusions in an instant, and here, He’s pointing out that it’s not what we say that demonstrates our faith in Him, but what we do.

Now let’s get this straight: You and I, if we believe in Jesus, are saved by grace. It’s a free gift from Him. It’s not about what we do; it’s about what He’s done, but at the same time, our works, what we end up doing with our lives, whether we obey Him or not, those works and deeds are the evidence of our faith in Him, or not. So right here, what He’s saying to you and to me is, “Stop kidding yourself. If you’re saying one thing and doing another, no, you are not My disciple. And when it comes to the day of judgment, I’ll be looking for the evidence of your faith.” Ouch!

There are some people who want to shoot me at this, but please remember: I’m just the messenger! Those are Jesus’ words and not mine. In fact, He goes on. Matthew 7:24-29:

‘Everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on a rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell and how great was its fall.’ Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority and not as their scribes.’

What an amazing picture He paints here: A picture that’s meant to show you and me how shocking our self-delusion really is; a picture that encourages us, woos us, to build our house on solid ground. The point of listening to Jesus and His amazing wisdom isn’t to participate in some interesting intellectual exercise or to be entertained or to have a theory lesson.

The point of listening to Jesus is to drink in the power of His Word and be transformed. Because when you and I take His Word into our hearts, when we recognise the power and the authority with which He speaks, as those people did who were listening to Him, when we let that power loose in our hearts, let me tell you, there is going to be some serious healing and transformation that starts to happen.

Before we can change what we do, we need to have a change of heart. Are you a heart surgeon? No, me neither. I, like you, need some serious help. Well, ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’. That’s the name of this series, and that is what is ready and waiting to happen if you receive the Word of Christ today, and allow it to dwell richly in you.

Come on. Are you deluding yourself? Sure you are. We all are to some extent. The songs we sing on Sundays, the sermons we hear and nod at and say amens and hallelujahs to, so often are a million miles away from the reality of how we live and the only person who can change how you live, the only person with the power and the wisdom and the love and the care that can transform how you live, is not you; it’s Jesus, so where will you build your house?

 

Miracle Working Power

Who needs miracles? I think we all do, so what is a miracle? Well, my dictionary tells me that it’s an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency. Sounds pretty much right, although you know, we’ve been talking about the miracle of the transformed life over the last few weeks on the programme.

The sorts of miracles that happen when Jesus speaks into our lives, and we accept His Word into our hearts, and He does things in us that we could never, ever have done for ourselves. That’s why this series has been called, ‘Jesus Speaks, Jesus Heals’, and you can listen to all the messages online right now at www.christianityworks.com.

To me, it’s a blooming miracle to see how God has dealt with my pride and my anger, and how He keeps dealing with those things, and I can honestly say that the transformation has happened because I’ve spent time most days in God’s Word (the Bible) and somehow, as I’ve received His Word into my heart, He’s worked it out in me through the trials and the tribulations and the challenges and the temptations that have met me around the next corner or over the next rise.

Without God’s Word each day, they would have just been trials and tribulations and challenges and temptations, without learning, without transformation, without growth. In fact probably, they would have just made me more bitter and with a harder heart. I just think that God is so ready, so willing, so able to perform major miracles in our lives through His Spirit and His Word, yet so many people who believe in Jesus don’t read His Word; don’t receive His Word; don’t bother with His Word, or they pick and choose. “Yeah, look, I like this bit, but that bit … not sleeping together before we’re married or that bit about forgiving that guy over there? That bit about being humble? No, don’t like those bits.” And then, we wonder why our lives are a mess.

I really encourage you to have a listen to (or read of) other messages in this series about the amazing miracles that happen when ‘Jesus Speaks and Jesus Heals’, but right now, as our time in this series comes to an end, I want to spend a bit of time in Matthew chapter 8, which is cram-packed full of the spectacular, supernatural miracles that so many people crave.

We don’t have time to look at them all, so let’s just have a listen to the first one. Matthew 8:1-4:

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed Him, and there was a leper who came and knelt before Him, saying, ‘Lord, if You choose, You can make me clean.’

Jesus stretched out His hands, touched the man and said, ‘I do choose. Be made clean,’ and immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priests, and offer the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony to them.’

A leper! Imagine! One of the outcasts of society. They weren’t allowed to live inside the city walls. They had to live outside the city without its protection of community. They couldn’t go to the temple or the synagogue the way other did. They couldn’t spend any time with their families. They were the least of the least. If anyone came within thirty feet of them, they had to shout, “Unclean! Unclean!”

How humiliating. How demeaning. They were less than human, and a leper, of all people a leper, dares to approach Jesus. As a leper he was forbidden from doing that, and he dares to say to this miracle working Jesus, “Lord, if You choose, You can make me clean.”

Have you ever felt like the least of the least before God? Sure you have. So have I. You feel completely unworthy. The stench of your sin in the nostrils of God, no different to the stench of that leper’s puss-filled sores and the unwashed body, and still he comes to Jesus with the temerity to say, “Lord, if You choose, You can make me clean.”

The response of any other religious leader of the day would have been to send him packing; to withdraw, lest he too catch this disease. The response of Jesus, on the other hand, was to reach out and touch him. Can you imagine what that felt like for the leper? To reach out and touch him and make him clean? Immediately, we’re told, the leprosy left him.

The leper says, “Lord, if You choose” and Jesus responds, “I do choose”. “I do choose” and with a healing touch. Of all the miracles in the Bible, this is my favourite one because all too often, I have been that leper, wondering whether to come before Jesus and whenever I doubt, I come back to this passage of Scripture because I realise the depth of the love that Jesus has for me. The depth of the love that Jesus has for you. All we need is a mustard seed of faith. Now the next guy. Matthew 8:5-13:

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, appealing to Him, saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’

But the centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have You come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man of authority, with soldiers under me: And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to the other, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.’

When Jesus heard him, He was amazed, and He said to all those who followed Him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go. Let it be done for you according to your faith,’ and the servant was healed that very hour

I’ve read the four gospels front to back and back to front dozens of times, and I am here to tell you that Jesus never, ever, ever criticised someone for placing too much faith in Him. In fact, the exact opposite is true. He was amazed at this man’s faith!

I don’t know why Jesus chooses to perform spectacular miracles in some people’s lives and not in others, but I choose to believe Him for miracles in my life, because I know that He comes to little people like you and me, and the leper, and the centurion, and a whole bunch of other people, and just at the right time. He intervenes supernaturally in our lives. What I do know though is that a lack of faith in Him is a one hundred percent guarantee to blocking any miracles He was planning on doing.

See, that’s exactly what happened in His hometown of Nazareth. Mark 6:4-6:

Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own houses.’ And He could do no deed of power there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and cured them, and He was amazed at their unbelief.

See, with the centurion, He was amazed at the man’s faith, especially since he wasn’t a Jew but a Roman. But with God’s own people, in fact with the very people with whom He grew up, with those people, Jesus wasn’t amazed by their faith; He was amazed by their unbelief.

So here’s what I’m thinking, “I would much rather have Jesus be amazed by my faith, rather than by my lack of it.” How about you? Where, when, how Jesus chooses to miraculously and powerfully intervene in your life I can’t tell you, but this I can, when ‘Jesus speaks, Jesus heals’.

His Word has the power to change your life in the most amazing, unpredictable ways. The choice for you, as it is for me, is will you hear His Word and accept it into your heart as being His powerful truth for you? And will you put so much faith in Him that He will be amazed at your faith, or will you be like the people of Nazareth and leave Him stunned by your lack of faith?

Want healing? Want power? Want transformation in your life? Then the answer, the only answer, is Jesus.